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Wednesday, April 7, 2010

A Little Structural FUN HERE!

Midwest Mama will have to forgive me for not building with her sooner in her tool box of Tuesday antics. I was in the BLAH mode before, but think a little bit of organizational hooplah might pull me out of the doledrums!

Here we go:

Today is TuEsDaY and let's go with:

Audiobooks.

Do you have a squirmy kid? OK..wait. WE ALL DO, I forget...no, I really didn't forget. I was HOPING! (bad humor on a Tues, I know!) But since we all have those little tykes no matter their size who squirm, wiggle and MOVE all about, fostering the listening skills is essential no matter their PREFERRED learning style. Some kids, in fact most will like the hands on approach to learning, but if we encourage them to sit still and listen what wonderful results they will gain in a life of sucessful living. HOW SAY I?

Think about all the places a human needs to carefully listen to fully understand the intended meaning of the speaker? I'm not even JUST discussing the formal settings of speaches, talks and sermons. I am referring to the one on one interaction of person to person whether it's face to face or phone line or wireless line to anykind of line! VOICE TO EAR to BRAIN is what I'm thinking! If we don't foster a keen sense of listening in our children what will they know? In fact, the deaf community "hear" without an auditory ear, I know, but there are nuances of speech that are more complex for their understanding and perhaps a challenge in their lives. Listening does more than realay sound, but inflection of mood and other meanings.

I think listening well cultivated helps in all communication. ALL.

Sooo how do I get a squirmy little fellow to sit long enough to absorb and relate to those sounds? MAKE IT FUN!

Audiobooks is one really really good way! I love them, and have since I was a kid with 33s borrowed from the library along with the book I "read" as it played its dramatized version of the story. I also LOVE radio theater. I remember listening as an older child finding late night productions and hardly being able to wait for the next night's installement.

There are many resource for FREE online now that the computer age is upon us!

Homeschool Radio Shows has free weekly mp3 downloads with family friendly well done children's stories where when you sign up, the Erskin Family will send the link to your mailbox each week. This week is a cute story called, The Buscuit Eater about a boy and his dog. These don't take more than around 20 minutes to listen to which is a good bit for young children, but may just entice them to sit still for that long. You can start out with smaller increments if needed of course, but encourage them to sit as still as possible. They may like to draw or color quietly which can take the form of note taking for an older child when more advanced forms of audiobooks can be used such as are found with

Within the above sites there are adult's and children's books with the last even classifying into young adult fiction as well. If you google search "free audiobooks" you will come up with many many many resources that can be broken into genre as well, such as children's, classic, classical, history, fiction, and more! Type in your fave author or book title too and you may be surprised what comes up! I am! ;-))

Listening is more than a pleasurable pursuit. It's a skill and worthy of intended seeking with our children.

MO Ways to share and stay up with SisterT!

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